


and if he fell as lucifer fell

by fiddle_stix



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demons, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Fallen Angels, Fictional Religion & Theology, Found Family, He's a Good Boy, Internal Conflict, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Protective Byun Baekhyun, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slow Burn, Sweet Oh Sehun, hints of - Freeform, one can be broken and still deserving of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27078700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiddle_stix/pseuds/fiddle_stix
Summary: “I was a good angel.” The words are tugged from him painfully like a plant being torn from the ground. “I listened, I played my part and now I’m here.In hell.”He doesn’t hear anything for a couple of moments. There’s only the distant crackle of fire that Junmyeon can always hear.“Weren’t we all?” Sehun’s voice is soft, so quiet that Junmyeon almost doesn’t catch it. “Good angels, I mean. Weren’t all fallen angels good once?”Junmyeon is an angel who fell from heaven, and Sehun is the demon who helps put the pieces back together.
Relationships: Kim Junmyeon | Suho/Oh Sehun, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 94
Collections: EXO MONSTERFEST 2020





	1. The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt #:** O171
> 
> Russell Crowe’s signing is questionable, but this song is still a bop and I stand by the title’s choice. _Les Misérables_ somehow played a bigger role in this story’s conception than I ever planned it to.
> 
> I may have ended up infusing way too much of myself into this story—in terms of the way I view love and its many madnesses. Somewhere along the way, religion became the medium which I used to explore this and thus, I must give a **warning for strong religious references.**
> 
> Yet despite my talk of god, heaven, hell, angels and satan, I have taken significant creative liberties with all of them. My demons in this story, who I have grown very attached to over the time which I have spent with them, are going to discuss their God and their own opinion of him, but this is not meant to call out or criticise people who practice religion.
> 
> **TW:** brief mention of suicide involving a minor character while discussing Sehun’s fall from hell.

> _And must I now begin to doubt,  
>  _ _Who never doubted all these years?_  
>  _My heart is stone and still it trembles_  
>  _The world I have known is lost in shadow._  
>  _Am I from heaven or from hell?_
> 
> **—** Herbert Kretzmer.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Junmyeon crashes to the ground.

It should hurt. Some distant part of Junmyeon registers that it does but he can’t find the strength to care. A fire crackles somewhere far away. Screams echo faintly, a cry for help that’s far too late. For a long time, Junmyeon doesn’t move.

He knows that he should be scared, perhaps have terror coursing through his veins. Junmyeon’s world, in barely more than a heartbeat, has been shattered; wrenched from a world that he had called his home as gravity had turned his foe and the shackles of punishment had been latched onto his wrists. 

But the shock of it all, the haziness of it, the way he feels frayed at the edges like he might disintegrate any second, overrides the terror. Maybe he left too much of his heart somewhere up above, in the heavens that he was just thrown out of. 

Junmyeon supposes that he should remember what it had felt like to fall— _hell, there were a million things on the list of things that Kim Junmyeon should have done_ —but the only sensation that he can recall is the feeling of his back pressed into the ground; bare for the first time in all his long existence and the horrible, undeniable truth of his sins. 

Another distant part of him starts up its prayers, a yearning that spreads throughout his body and burns across his skin until its hymns are thrumming against his skull. _Let me see sunlight and blue skies and the gentle rush of water down a stream just one more time,_ it begs. It almost forces him to roll over and fall to his knees and stay there until they’re rubbed raw and bloody. 

But God claims no ownership of the damned. God won’t hear his pleas now.

Junmyeon is almost grateful that there’s nothing left of his soul to ache in his chest. _Almost._

His throat is impossibly dry. Maybe he’s forgotten the taste of water, how bland he used to find it, nothing more than something to make into wine. Now Junmyeon’s throat yearns for it like a true sinner clasping his hands in prayer. 

The memory sits at the corner of his mind, prying in between his thoughts, just waiting to be relived. It’s the look that pierces Junmyeon the most, the memory of God’s gaze bearing into his as He reached out to shatter Junmeyon’s soul, to rip off the wings— _the gifts_ Junmyeon had been blessed with—straight from his back. 

Junmyeon hasn’t reached out a hand to press against his back. He _can’t._ Because once he does and his hand meets scarred, bare skin, then he’ll have absolute proof that his fate is sealed. And the memory of God—staring into his face, with a strange turn to his lip and for the first time looking at Junmyeon as if he’s unsure of what he sees—scorched into his mind forevermore.

His heart clenches in his chest. Junmyeon isn’t sure if he’s even got a heart anymore, but it clenches anyway. Desperately, he finds himself trying to follow the rules that have been carved into him, the words, the virtues. Even if God has thrown him away, ripped him to pieces, he tries to remind himself of the proper rules of life; even as he stumbles around hell, feeling like a candle burnt down to the end of its wick. 

Loyalty—Junmyeon finds, as the crackling of fire roars in his ears—is funny like that.

A demon snarls as she passes by him. The demon’s eyes are alight, the imprint of red burned onto the back of Junmyeon’s eyelids. He wonders if he looks the same as the crazed creature who is gone as fast as she had come. He misses blue so much that it aches. 

When he accidentally steps too close to a burning flame, a dash of heat flutters across his back. It burns. Somewhere in the distance there’s a scream; long and pained. A cry for mercy. Junmyeon glances up at the sky above him, stretching so high that it just dissolves into black. He finds himself missing the clouds that he’d barely thought of as an angel. 

Anything from home, even a sliver of what he used to know. Anything, instead of this darkened world graced only by the light of fire and brimstone.

Junmeyon falls to his knees on the riverbank. Or what he thinks could be a river. It’s not water that fills the crevice, not the gentle blue of the ocean that Junmeyon wishes for. It’s thicker and more alive, closer to melted gold, but it flows and trickles along and it’s the closest thing to water that he’s seen since he’s fallen. He finds himself hunching over, watching the lava drift past him. If he closes his eyes and lets himself imagine, Junmyeon can almost convince himself that the sound is water babbling along. 

He’s so intent on listening that he misses someone approaching, until a shadow dances next to him. He glances up, spotting a boy next to him; taller than him but with something gentle in his face.

“Hi,” the boy says gently, shifting from foot to foot as if he were nervous.

Junmeyon doesn’t answer. His throat feels parched. 

“New fallen?”

That rattles something inside of Junmyeon. “How did you know?”

The boy gestures to the river—if it can be called that. “Many young demons find themselves here, right after their fall. They come in search of water.”

At the mention of water, Junmyeon sits up properly. “Is there water? Do you have water in hell?”

The boy sends him a strange look. “You don’t need it.”

“I know, I know I don’t,” Junmyeon says quickly. He had never needed to consume water or all the substances that mortals needed to survive. “But I just–” he finds himself trailing off, not knowing how much to say.

“You miss it.” There’s an understanding in the boy’s eyes. One that Junmyeon had never been taught to expect from a demon.

“I do,” he admits.

“Me too.” The boy is wearing a smile that doesn’t quite look happy. Something bittersweet, something tied to a memory. Then he shifts on his feet again. “I don’t have water. It doesn’t last very long down here in hell. But I have something close to it back at my cabin. If you’d like some.”

Junmyeon looks up at this boy, takes in his face properly. It’s prettier than he had expected. He finds himself searching for signs of demon. He had always thought that it was something that you would be able to see in someone’s face. 

“You’re inviting me to your home?”

The boy’s eyes widen, looking flustered. “You don’t have to. It was just an offer–”

Junmyeon moves to stand up, cutting off the boy who moves closer to extend a hand to help him up. “I don’t even know your name,” Junmyeon tells him as he rights himself and dusts off his knees.

“It’s Sehun,” the boy tells him quickly, retracting his hands and shoving them in his pockets when he looks unsure of what to do with them. “My name is Sehun.” 

“I’m Junmyeon,” he tells Sehun, trying for a smile. He can’t tell if it falls flat or not.

“It’s nice to meet you,” the boy says quietly, still looking a little unsure even as he leads Junmyeon in the direction of his home. They don’t exchange more conversation as they walk. Junmyeon is once again reminded of his lack of shoes, glancing across at the black boots Sehun is clad in. He’d never needed shoes in heaven, not when they never had to touch the ground.

Sehun’s cabin seems to be on the outskirts of what Junmyeon thinks is a town. There’s people heading down streets and a distant bustle that reminds Junmyeon of little human towns he’s visited in the past. He’d never expected to find demons so civilised. The sounds almost drown out the distant crackle of fire. 

Sehun holds the door open for him. Junmyeon doesn’t know what to say. Sehun points him over to a table before he has to think of something.

“It’s called Lacus. It’s not quite water,” Sehun tells him as he makes his way over to the cabinets. “But it’s the closest thing we have down here.” While he’s rummaging around and pulling out a glass, Junmeyon takes a moment to drift his gaze around the room. It’s nothing he had quite been expecting either; no sigils decorating the walls that’s for sure. Instead it looks cosy. Well lived in. A gentle sort of warm.

The glass clicks as it makes contact with the table, and he glances up to see Sehun hovering there, fingers fiddling with the bottom of his shirt. Junmyeon looks down at the cup, surprised to find it filled with a clear liquid. It looks cold. Junmyeon finds himself reaching for it before he can stop himself. His hands hover over the edge of it and then he glances back up at Sehun.

“It’s not much,” the boy tells him, misinterpreting the look of confusion that Sehun sends him as distaste.

Junmyeon’s fingers touch the glass. “It’s cold,” he finds himself whispering, lips parting in awe.

Sehun doesn’t say anything more after that, but Junmyeon thinks he spots the boy smiling as he takes a sip of the drink. It’s not water—the taste is a little too strange for that—but it soothes Junmyeon’s throat. Without meaning to, he finds himself draining the glass.

Sehun doesn’t say anything yet, just getting up to pour him another glass. “Thank you,” Junmyeon murmurs as he accepts it, a real smile tugging at his lips.

“It’s the least I can do.” Sehun purses his lips, fingers tapping on the surface of the table. “Your first visit to hell is always the worst. Especially when it’s not really a visit.” His voice turns to a whisper at his last words, almost as if they’re an afterthought.

Junmyeon’s heart drops in his chest a little—or at least what’s left of it. Sehun seems to notice.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, concern catching at the corners of his mouth, “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

“No, you’re right. This is my fate now.”

The worry in Sehun’s expression shifts to something sad instead.

“It’s not even the fact that I miss heaven,” Junmyeon finds himself saying without meaning to. “I miss it, I do. The skies and looking down at the water below. It’s the pieces of me, the pieces of my soul. That’s what I miss the most.”

“You can find them again. The pieces of your soul, I mean.”

Junmyeon snaps his head up to look at Sehun. “What did you just say?”

“When you fell, God shattered your soul,” Sehun says the words so casually, like it’s something that happens everyday. Junmyeon supposes it does. “But he doesn’t keep those pieces. They fall with you when you come down and now they’re scattered around hell.”

“The pieces of my soul are here? In hell?”

Sehun nods. “Some demons, you know when they first arrive, it’s the first thing that they try to do; searching around for all the pieces of their soul.”

Junmyeon feels like his world is reconfiguring itself all over again. “What do they do? When you find them I mean, do you get your soul back?”

“When you hold them in your hands again, the pieces of your soul reconnect. If you find all of them, then you’ll be able to rebuild your soul.”

“I want to.” Junmyeon knows he sounds desperate but he doesn’t care. “I want the pieces back, I want to be me again.”

Something sad falls over Sehun’s face. Maybe it’s sympathy or maybe it’s something else, but eventually the boy nods. “I’ll help you look.”

“Now.” Junmyeon makes a move to get to his feet but before he can stand up, a gentle hand wraps around his wrist.

“You must be tired,” Sehun says softly. “We’ll go in the morning.”

Junmyeon squints at him. “How do I know that I can trust you?”

“I thought angels didn’t believe that demons held any loyalty.”

“Give me your word.”

Sehun squeezes his wrist gently. “You have my word.”

“You’ll help me find them?”

“I swear it on the fallen Lucifer himself.”

Nowhere, in heaven or in hell, has Junmyeon ever held another’s gaze like this. Sehun’s eyes are full of sincerity. Junmyeon lets himself find trust in them, like words on a page becoming thoughts. _It’s not like he’s got anything left to lose._

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

They set out in what Junmyeon suspects could be morning. There’s no sun in the home of the accursed, although it’s certainly never cold; fire is a constant in hell. It’s fitting. 

Junmyeon thinks that the separation between day and night might have something to do with the distant screams rising in volume and how everyone had found their way back inside when they rose to a sharp wail. He never thought that demons would be afraid of anything, least of all the cries of damned souls. He almost goes to ask Sehun about it, but bites his cheek instead. There's no reason to try and unravel the secrets of hell; the place means nothing to him. Especially when he’s not going to be here long.

"You should be able to feel a pull towards them," Sehun tells him after they made their way out of the little cluster of cabins. "The pieces of your soul are so used to being together and fitted alongside each other, so they'll be calling out to you in some way. They don't exactly like change," Sehun muses the last part more to himself than to anyone else.

Junmyeon's eyebrows pull together. "I should be able to sense them?"

"You should. It should be pretty clear to feel, a kind of strange tug right here." Sehun gestures to a point in the middle of his chest.

Junmyeon brings a hand up to his own chest. It feels empty and strange and kind of aches, but under it there's a faint sort of feeling, so weak that he almost doesn't notice it. He lifts an ey ebrow, shooting a look at Sehun.

"You feel something?" Sehun asks. His fingers are tucked into his palms as they walk, almost like he’s keeping them warm. It's a stupid thought and Junmyeon pushes it away.

He sighs instead. "It's not strong but I think I feel something. Like I'm on one end of a really long piece of string."

Sehun nods, taking it all in stride. "That's fairly normal. The feeling tends to increase as you get closer. Hopefully they're not too far."

"So what now? We're just going to walk about until I feel something? Like some sort of bloodhound."

The grin Sehun sends him is full of mischief. "You have a better idea?"

Junmyeon can't help but roll his eyes. "I suppose not." They continue to walk for a little while. He tries not to get frustrated. Patience is virtue, quite literally, and greed was not the reason for his banishment. "How many pieces does a soul usually break into?" he finds himself asking instead.

"It varies from demon to demon. God doesn't seem to care how many parts he breaks your soul into, just that it's shattered."

Junmyeon grits his teeth at the boy's tone but doesn't comment on it. "How many pieces did you have?"

"Eleven."

Surprise colours Junmyeon, quickly replaced by dread. "That's so many to find."

Sehun shrugs. "Most people have less. A boy I met at a market once only had six, another girl four."

It does nothing to quell the worry seeping into Junmyeon.

Sehun bites his lip, using one hand to tug at the bottom of his own shirt. "It shouldn't take too long to find them all. Honest. Lucifer, who was thrown from heaven in the cold hours of the morning, found all of his soul before God even got to greet the moon. He was just as eager as you to find all the pieces of his soul and slot them back together."

"Do not compare me to the devil himself."

Mercifully, Sehun does not mention that Junmyeon is a demon now, or the fact that both of them undoubtedly bear more similarities to Satan than to the Lord. Sehun just keeps his fingers curled into his palms and walks on.

Devil or not, they only cover a couple more yards—making their way across fissures in the ground—before Junmyeon starts to feel something tighten across his ribcage.

It's such a startling sensation that Junmyeon throws out a hand on instinct, just able to stop himself before his hand finds Sehun's wrist.

His eyes go wide, but when he catches Sehun's gaze the demon has a small smile on his lips. He doesn't ask. It's not like he needs to. He gives a little wave to the area in front of them, a space barren except for the jagged rocks that stick out of the ground, and murmurs gently, "lead the way."

It's enough to break Junmyeon out of his shock, to have him starting forward when he realises that the hand at the other end of his invisible string is yanking him insistently. He follows it, a slave to its wishes. Vaguely, somewhere over his shoulder, he registers Sehun behind him. 

Then he sees it.

A white feather. Nestled beneath a rock, omitting the faintest glow, a beacon he's impossibly and irrevocably pulled towards. Junmyeon falls to his knees beside it. It's brilliant white, brighter than the clouds he used to live amongst. 

It's _his_. He doesn't know how he knows that. But he feels it deep in his soul; a familiarity, a yearning.

When his fingertips brush over its edge, ever so lightly, he feels close to tears. The overwhelming feeling of rightness that builds up inside his chest when he brings it into his palm is so strong, almost crippling him. Something inside of him clicks back into place; a river winding its way back to the sea.

Then something shifts and Junmyeon cries out as the feather starts to dissolve, slipping out of his sight in fragments, fading into thin air. He darts his gaze to Sehun, shock and despair alight in his veins. "What is happening?"

Sehun stands there calmly. He should not be calm right now. 

"It's returned," is all he supplies.

"Returned where? Where has it gone?" Junmyeon's voice has raised to a shout.

But then Sehun is lifting up a hand to rest against his sternum. "To you."

The wisps of understanding thread together. 

_Oh._

Cautiously, Junmyeon reaches up a hand to his own chest, applying pressure to a point right in its centre. It's then that he registers the presence of something that wasn't there before. Something warm, bright and devastatingly familiar.

When he raises his head—a tide of wonderment coursing through his veins—he catches Sehun smiling at him, soft and gentle. Junmyeon has no idea how much time passes between them, hand still pressed to his chest and holding Sehun's gaze, but he hardly cares. A hundred years could have passed, he supposes, and he wouldn't have cared; not with Sehun looking at him like that and a piece of his soul returned.

"We should probably start heading back," Sehun tells him when they return to their walk.

Junmyeon protests immediately. "We can't head back. Not yet."

"It's getting late."

Junmyeon squints at the sky. From the murky red of hell above them, he has no idea if it's day or night in the world. "I want to find another piece of me."

Sehun rolls his eyes playfully. "We will, I promise you. We've got time."

Junmyeon still isn't sure if he's supposed to trust Sehun's word. Everything he learnt up in the heavens despised even the mere notion of trusting a demon. But he wonders, maybe, if he's in a little too deep for that. 

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

The next day is as undirected as before. But this time Junmyeon has a new found vigour in each of his steps. Not even the distant crackles of fire can dissuade him. It's as if finding the first piece has ignited something within him. Or that now he has his first piece returned, he has its call to be reconnected with the others to hold onto.

Somewhere along the way, they've slipped into a discussion about humans and other tales from above. Sehun recounts the story of a child he'd watched over as a guardian angel, a little girl who had a penchant for climbing trees and an even greater one for falling out of them. "It had scared her mother and I to our wits end, no matter how much she was warned away from them. If ever there was a time where I had been close to revealing myself to a human, it was then."

"Surely she grew out of it," Junmyeon said, stifling his laughter at the idea of Sehun standing under a tree, watching in dismay as a little girl climbed up its branches.

"I'm not sure if she did. Even when she grew into an adult and it was my time to leave her, you could still find her in trees more often than not." Sehun's voice was laced with fondness and vaguely Junmyeon registered how endearing it was. 

(Only vaguely).

"Humans are funny like that, picking up funny habits."

"It's hardly exclusive. All creatures, I've found, have their peculiar patterns of behaviour."

_Like the way you curl your fingers into your palms,_ Junmyeon's brain supplies. It's not even vaguely this time. He ignores it again. "I suppose nature does love to throw itself in circles."

Sehun snorts. "That's definitely one way to put it."

"I do always wonder though about the reasoning behind the things that humans do. Even beyond them getting stuck in their ways. Is it the shortness of their lifetime that causes them to be so irrational?"

Sehun's eyebrows dance into his hairline and he tilts his head to the side. "Irrational in what ways?"

"Oh, there are so many. They have this desire to give meaning to everything they find, to question and assign meaning to things outside of what has already been determined for them."

"You mean the Bible?"

"Yes, exactly. They are so intent to see everything, to understand even the unimaginable things that they fail to see the path that has already been laid out for them."

A crease between Sehun's eyebrows begins to form. "I have always found their curiosity to be charming."

"Perhaps so. But there is a point where I find they become reckless. Which only ever leads them to be more contradictory. They can be so open, so fearless to push boundaries of knowledge, and yet in other realms they become fiercely protective."

"Like?"

"Like the way that they choose to love. Humans always guard their love with so much caution. They are often too scared to part with it that they are unable to find the love they desire in return."

Sehun's hand has found its way to the bottom of his shirt, toying with the edge of it as he replies. "You don’t think that they have a reason for it? Hearts are fragile."

Junmyeon shakes his head. "Love is giving yourself to the other person completely. If you do not give over everything that you have then you cannot expect to be loved fully in return."

"That is not love. That is devotion." Sehun looks almost sad as he says it.

"They are but the same."

Sehun opens his mouth to say something, then closes it. He worries his lip between his teeth. When he speaks next his voice is a low murmur, definitely sad this time. "My guess is that nobody has ever truly loved you before."

Junmyeon startles. He had not been expecting such bluntness. If not for the concerned look in Sehun's eyes it would have sounded mean—would have felt derisive in the way that Junmeyon had expected demons to be. That thought was challenged the moment Sehun approached him, let him into his home.

He squints Sehun, unsure of what to make of the demon's remark. Whatever he had been searching for in the boy's face he does not find.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

“Remind me why we’re here?”

Another person jostles his shoulder as they bustle past, carrying a strange array of chains and metal that Junmyeon wants nothing to do with. It must show on his face because Sehun rolls his eyes. “I told you, I have to pick something up. One of my friends just came back from a trip and he’s got some artefacts he wants me to take a look at.”

“That still doesn’t answer the question of why _I’m_ here.”

Sehun’s mouth quirks up into a grin. “Well you didn’t ask that question.” The cheeky little thing. Who knew demons could be this cute while they had mischief dancing in their eyes. “What else were you going to do? Sit around back at the cabin?”

Junmyeon has barely been here for more than a week and not entirely keen on venturing into a space that’s largely unfamiliar to him. Add onto the fact that the thought of becoming comfortable in hell makes his stomach churn. He doesn’t say any of that. “I could be searching for more pieces, you know. Detours kind of take away from that time.”

“If you knew your way around hell then I wouldn’t be here helping you.”

Junmyeon didn’t have an answer to that, so he simply crosses his arms over his chest. By the look of the grin that’s dancing across Sehun’s face, he knows that he’s won. 

They walk around for a little longer, and Junmyeon isn’t even sure they have a proper destination in mind, until Sehun spots something and a small smile breaks out across his face. “There he is.” Junmyeon follows the boy’s gaze to one of the stalls nestled in the corner of the market, a taller demon standing outside of it, hands shoved in his pockets and observing the bustling markets quietly. “I’ll be right back,” Sehun tells him quickly and then, just like that, he’s gone, darting through the throngs of people toward the demon. 

For a long moment, Junmyeon doesn’t move, watching Sehun greet the taller demon with a side hug and then disappear—to look at whatever _artefacts,_ Junmyeon supposes with a strange sort of bitterness. He rocks back on his feet, making his way out of the stream of market-goers. One of them decides to hiss at him. Demons really are another breed.

He’s only just stepping away when he notices another demon approaching him. The market is loud, crowds of people around him, but this demon looks straight into Junmyeon’s eyes as if locking in on a target.

“You,” the demon says when he’s close enough.

Junmyeon doesn’t know what to say.

“You’re Junmyeon, right? The newly fallen angel?”

“How do you know my name?”

The demon doesn’t answer his question. Instead he leans in closer, eyes fiery. Then a hand appears on his shoulder as someone else joins their circle.

“Back off, Baekhyun. I thought Yixing talked to you about getting in people’s faces.”

The demon, who Junmyeon now assumes to be Baekhyun, settles back on his feet. His wary expression says, his gaze burning. “This is Junmyeon,” Baekhyun tells the demon beside him, pointing a finger. “The one Sehun is helping out.”

_Ah, so they know Sehun._ Junmyeon isn’t quite sure if this is a good thing or not. With Baekhyun’s new information, the other demon turns a curious gaze to Junmyeon. It doesn’t have the same intensity as Baekhyun’s, but there’s something wary in it too. “Huh,” the demon says after a moment. “Well, nice to meet you.” He extends a hand to Junmyeon. “I’m Minseok.”

Junmyeon takes it hesitantly. Minseok’s palm is warm, almost too hot in a way that Junmyeon has found most things in hell are. “Nice to meet you too,” he replies, with the same carefulnes as Minseok retracts his hand.

“How has hell been treating you? Sehun has been telling us about you.”

“He has?”

Minseok's smile grows slowly and Junmyeon doesn’t miss the hint of something more that lies there; a sliver of demon.

“He has,” Baekyun spits out, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes have dialed back a little, but are still ablaze. “We’ve heard quite a lot about you.” 

With the way his lips purse, the words look like they leave a bitter taste in Baekhyun’s mouth. He doesn’t elaborate. Junmyeon doesn’t know whether to be thankful for that or not as he has no idea what Sehun has told them.

“Sehun has been helping me a lot, so I’m grateful,” he says after a moment, trying to play it safe.

“Helping, huh?”

Minseok shoots a look at Baekhyun. Baekhyun just meets Junmyeon’s gaze, looking defiant.

“Yes. He’s been helping me. Have you got a problem with that?”

Something flares up in Baekhyun’s expression and then he’s taking a step closer, getting back in Junmeyon’s face. “I’ve got a problem with that alright. You don’t get to show up to here, all angel-faced and freshly fallen and start causing him trouble. He’s not for you to mess with, you hear me?”

It’s Junmyeon’s turn to cross his arms over his chest. “You’re demons. _We’re_ demons,” he can’t manage to get the words out without curling his lip in distaste, but he says them anyway. “Isn’t it your job to cause trouble?”

“Not for Sehun.” There’s no room for questions. Not when Baekhyun is looking at him with such a serious expression. Junmyeon is sure that an expression like that could bring someone to their knees.

“Sehun isn’t like other demons,” Minseok says after a moment and there’s a smile toying with his lips.

Junmyeon raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“He’s the most angel out of all of us,” Minseok grins and then reaches out for Baekhyun’s shoulder, pulling the demon away. He might not have said it aloud, but Minseok’s expression just before he turns away is almost as effective as what Baekhyun had said. _Don’t mess with him,_ loud and clear. _Or else._

When Sehun meets up with him and asks if he’s okay, Junmyeon can only nod. He’s looking over his shoulder for the rest of the afternoon.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

There’s a strange warmth to hell that Junmyeon doesn’t think he will ever get used to.

He had thought, when he was an angel and enamoured with life, that he had learned every secret that the universe had to offer. Junmyeon was within His Lord’s jurisdiction, the omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient. But he had been wrong. Maybe He had been wrong too.

The fires of hell were like little flames on a candle wick; the ones you held up to the old cracks of ruin and the old, dust-lined books tucked into the corner of the library. All the darkness and the fractures of the world were banished down to hell to be held under this light. A light that God had scorned with all of the forces available to Him, yet a light that demons seemed to come alive within.

_What,_ Junmyeon finds himself asking, _does the flame reveal?_

_Sins,_ a scathing, sharpened part of him barks. _The marks of the wicked._ And yet—although he knows this part to be true in the eyes of his Lord—another part of himself, diffident and wary, the part that finds a little too much comfort in the small curve of Sehun’s smile, responds: _the truth._

Junmyeon doesn’t know what to do with that thought.

He finds he does not have to know, for he looks up and spots Sehun appearing from inside the cabin. He’s holding something in his hands that looks tattered and old, like something out of a priest’s chest. All he catches is a glint of metal before Sehun slips the object into his pocket.

“Ready to head off?”

Junmyeon nods. Before he falls into step with the boy, a flicker of light dances across Sehun’s face. Junmyeon wonders, more of a fleeting thought he’s not brave enough to follow yet, what Sehun would look like under the candlelight. 

He gives his head a little shake and takes two quick steps to catch up to the other demon. They haven’t determined a destination like usual, settling their own steady pace.

“Have you ever met someone down here that you’d known from above?”

Sehun quirks an eyebrow. “Isn’t that everybody down here? Did you not meet Lucifer in his first form?”

“No, sure you’ve probably seen a lot of these people before. But I mean someone like a friend. Was there someone you were close with when you were in heaven that you met again down here?”

Sehun’s fingers curl into his hand and Junmyeon finds himself pushing down a smile. There’s no reason he should be feeling fondness over such a thing. “There weren't many that I was close to while in heaven. I’m not, uh– I’m not exactly the greatest at the whole people thing.”

“Even with the millenniums that you had to get to know each other?”

A wry grin toys with Sehun’s lips. “Especially with all that time. After the thousands that you meet over the years, one can barely remember a face anymore. Not that I particularly wanted to near the end of it all.” 

“I’m sure you weren’t that bad. You’re God’s creation after all.”

“I was also God’s creation when I fell from grace. Which, last I recall if we’re citing scripture, made me quite bad.”

“That doesn–” Junmyeon doesn’t finish the thought. There are too many implications behind the words that almost slipped from his tongue. He glances across to check Sehun’s expression, but the boy’s gaze is taking in the surroundings, no sign on his face that he’s heard anything.

Silence shutters them in. Junmyeon is still trying to reel in his thoughts. Distractedly, he notices the shirt that’s draped over Sehun’s shoulders, a flowy sort of thing that flutters in the non-existent breeze. 

It’s pretty.

Junmyeon quickly grasps that thought to shove it into a box somewhere in his chest, locking it in next to all his hidden smiles. Hell’s humidity must be getting to his head.

According to Sehun’s determinations, they pass half a day together wandering around before Junmyeon finds another piece of himself. The feather is lying on the edge of a crater. Junmyeon had felt the little string tighten from a mile away, the urgency of his footsteps increasing as he got closer. 

This time he doesn’t panic as the feather slips away through the layers of materiality. He just closes his eyes and lets the feeling of peace wash over him. He imagines a sun meeting the skyline after a long day, melting into the horizon and painting the world a brilliant gold. 

To Junmyeon’s surprise, instead of suggesting to go straight back to the cabin, Sehun points them towards what he’s dubbed as the ‘city’. It doesn’t quite resemble the cities that humans reside in on earth—empty of flashing lights and sprawling buildings. But there’s a hum in the air as they wind further into the gaggle of people, a bustle that one can only find at the hub of a community.

“Jongin mentioned it to me the other day,” Sehun says as they make their way through the throng. “He and Chanyeol were the ones I met up with at the market the other day. I’m not the biggest fan of gatherings”—Junmyeon distinctly remembers Sehun admitting that he’s not the greatest with people and can’t quite imagine the demon in a crowded place—“but they said that the others were going to be here too and I can’t really get out of things when Baekhyun is involved.”

At the mention of Baekhyun a shiver runs down Junmyeon’s spine. 

“Hopefully we don’t stay too long. Demon parties are weird.”

“We’re going to a demon party?”

Sehun seems embarrassed by the incredulity that seeps into Junmyeon’s tone.

“It shouldn’t be too rowdy; I mean it’s at Chanyeol’s so a lot of people might show–”

“But still a demon party?”

“Technically any party you go to will be a demon party now.”

Junmyeon can’t exactly argue with that. 

He hears the party before he sees it. Loud chatter bubbles from within, spilling out the open doorway and onto the streets. Junmyeon shoots Sehun a look, eyebrow raised, and all the demon can respond with is a sheepish grin.

“They’re my friends, you’ll like them.” Junmyeon still isn’t convinced. “And, hey, you’ve already met Minseok and Baekhyun.” Another shiver down Junmyeon’s spine. Turns out Sehun is terrible at comforting.

“Let’s just go in.”

It’s even louder when they get inside, demons packed closer together than they were on the streets. There’s something reminiscent of a bar over on the left wall, its crooked structure and strange black marble surface nothing like Junmyeon has ever seen before. 

There’s something bubbling next to it in a hollowed out portion of the ground and for a second Junmyeon thinks it’s lava. But then someone sticks a ladle in it and someone else knocks back a shot and _holy crap_ , demons might be immortal but no way in hell would they be able to stomach molten lava.

Junmyeon looks away, unsettled.

Sehun leads them over to a small crowd of people, some of whom Junmyeon recognises. Minseok, who greets him with a smile that looks genuine, this time thankfully devoid of his friend, and the demon Sehun had met at the market, who introduces himself as Chanyeol. 

There’s two more faces that Junmyeon doesn’t know. 

Jongin greets him first— _seriously, why do so many of Sehun’s friends have to be so bloody tall?_ —looking terribly intimidating for two point five seconds, until the other boy next to him mutters something and he bursts out laughing. His eyes go all squinty, lips pulled into a wide grin and it almost has Junmyeon’s lips curling into a smile of his own.

“Don’t let Hyojun ever hear you say that,” Jongin manages to get out when he finally quells his laugher. 

The demon next to him just shrugs. “It’s not my fault.”

“I can’t believe she told Satan to go to hell. She’s going to be our next martyr.”

“Oh please,” the demon sighs, taking a sip from his glass. His drink, thankfully, does not resemble lava. “As if Satan would hurt one of his own. If anything, he’s going to be telling that story for the next millennium.”

“It will be something new at least. The story about his wings gets old.”

The demon hums in agreement, taking another sip before he seems to notice Junmyeon’s presence at the table. “Oh.”

“Hello.” Junmyeon still isn’t sure what is customary and polite among demons. His first proper conversation with anyone other than Sehun has involved a lot of intense glaring and threats.

“I’m Kyungsoo,” the demon says.

“Junmyeon. I’m Sehun’s, uh.” He’s not quite sure he has the answer for that

Kyungsoo’s eyes flit between the two of them. His tone is pointed when he asks, “Sehun’s?”

“Friend.” It’s Sehun who answers. Junmyeon can’t help but feel a little surprised. Although, he supposes, they do seem to be friends. After spending so much time with each other all day, friendship was probably the best way to describe what’s developed between them.

Kyungsoo is watching him with a strange expression. Maybe Junmyeon had been right to worry about threats, if Kyungsoo turned out anything like Baekhyun.

“My infernal comrades!”

_Speak of the devil, and he shall appear._

Baekhyun arrives bearing a glass in each hand, one filled with the detestably molten liquid. When he notices Junmyeon at the table, his smile sharpens a little. Kyungsoo notices, glancing between them, but doesn’t bring it up.

“Well, well, what a fine evening. Hope you all have been keeping warm.”

Chanyeol rolls his eyes, plucking the cup of lava stuff out of Baekhyun’s hands and taking a sip. Junmyeon very narrowly stops himself from recoiling. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

Baekhyun sends him a wink and settles down next to Kyungsoo, which does not end up being great for Junmyeon as the demon is now directly opposite him. “The night is almost upon us, let me have my fun while I can.”

That pokes at something that had been on Junmyeon’s mind. “How can you tell?” he blurts out before he can stop himself.

Baekhyun swivels his head to level him with a glare, all previous humour in his face erased. “Tell what?”

Junmyeon wills himself not to stutter, to wither under Baekhyun’s gaze. He’s got too much pride for that. “Nighttime. You said it’s almost night. To my knowledge there is no sun visible from hell. So how do you know if it’s night or day?”

The glare doesn’t waver. Junmyeon can’t remember if he’s ever had a staring contest with anyone but this is not how he thought his first one would go.

Minseok kicks Baekhyun in the shin. “Don’t be difficult, you ass.”

Baekhyun looks affronted for three seconds before he pokes his tongue out at Minseok. The mood lightens significantly. 

It’s Minseok who ends up answering his question. “We use the spirits to differentiate between night and day. The human ones that is. I’m sure you’ve heard them, making their weird screams. They’re pretty calm during the day because they seem calmed by the sun, but they go crazy at night.”

“They’re humans so they’re still attuned to the human world,” Jongin adds. “We demons can’t really tell, or rather we don’t really care enough for whether it's night or day in heaven.”

“Then why bother heading in at night? If you don’t care in the first place.”

Kyungsoo speaks next, still watching Junmyeon curiously. “Damned souls are dangerous. The human ones at least.”

Now that surprises Junmyeon. “You’re scared of human souls?”

“You should be too,” Kyungsoo tells him.

Minseok nods. “There’s a lot of power in a soul gone mad. We demons, we can still get pieces of our humanity back. Find a piece of our soul, gain a little brightness back, remember the lessons that we were taught up in the land of the mighty and the holy.”

“You don’t want to face a soul gone mad.” Sehun’s voice is quiet, the look in his eyes something faraway.

The others hum in agreement. With a dainty hand, Baekhyun raises his glass to his lips, elaborate in all of his actions. “God reserves a special kind of torture for humans.”

“Don’t they…could you not argue that it’s a motive for them not to sin?”

Sehun stiffens beside him. Junmyeon isn’t sure of the reason but regret rises in his throat. He doesn’t enjoy making Sehun uncomfortable. (Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they are now friends.)

“I am not sure why you are here or for what reason you fell,” Some steel has returned to Baekhyun’s face. “But I can say with almost absolute certainty that some of them, if not most of them, have done little more than you to receive their sentence in hell. Probably—and I do not care about your pride so I will say this freely—less than you, in a lot of cases.”

His pride chooses that exact moment to flare up. But before he can say anything to defend himself, Minseok interrupts them. “Have you not realised that now—in the eyes of God at the very least—you’re as damned as the rest of us?”

Minseok doesn’t say the words harshly, instead with a strange kindness. Junmyeon doesn’t quite know what to say in response to that. _Wasn’t he working on it? Finding the pieces of his soul and reassembling himself? He would not end up like these demons._

“I need a drink,” Sehun says, climbing to his feet.

Chanyeol rises as well. “I’ll come with you. Nobody seems to ever get my order right.”

Baekhyun is wearing his affronted look again. “I get you Dragon’s Breath every time! How dare you disrespect me like this!”

Reaching a hand down, Chanyeol pats him on the cheek, muttering a half-sarcastic, half-fond ‘good boy’. Junmyeon has never seen a demon blush before and if he wasn’t so scared of what Baekhyun might do to him, he would have burst out laughing.

Their little party breaks up after that, mixing into the rest of the crowd. Kyungsoo and Jongin set off to find, and most likely tease, Hyojun. Minseok says he’s off to find a friend, extending an offer to accompany him. But Junmyeon declines, more interested in taking in the party that is alive around them. 

He finds his way over to a free section of the wall, settling against it to watch the thrum of demons around him. How strange they all are. Junmyeon still cannot imagine being one of them, no matter what Minseok said earlier. 

He’s so lost in the train of thought, gaze caught by the flashing red of a demon’s eyes in the firelight, that he doesn’t realise he’d been followed.

Baekhyun mirrors his pose against the wall, leaning back against it and surveying the crowd.

For the first time since they met in the market, Junmyeon realises that the demon is shorter than him. It almost makes him laugh.

“I’m not messing with him, if that is what you are here to ask about.”

Baekhyun turns to him, raising an eyebrow. “Sure you’re not.”

“It’s the truth.”

“One can intend not to do something and still do it.”

A heat flares across Junmyeon’s chest. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that over the centuries that I have lived in both this world and that of our heavenly Father, I have found that intentions often mean little to others.”

Junmyeon crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” He does not entirely wish to either.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Baekhyun muses. It grates on Junmyeon’s nerves. “Angels live with such virtue, such righteousness. So devoted to God that they often cannot see His failings.”

“You sound like every other demon. Maybe try for some originality next time.”

Baekhyun huffs out a laugh as if Junmyeon is a child. “Let me ask you this, oh wise fallen angel. How did you get here?”

“You’re asking how I fell?”

“Precisely.”

Junmyeon draws in a breath. He hadn’t thought about his fall often since it happened, especially not the parts before it. “My friend, or rather fellow angel, was involved in a union with a human. I stumbled upon their secret on a trip to the mortal world,” _oh how Junmyeon wished he had never walked into that coffee shop or spotted the two of them at their little table._ “When they asked me for aid, I did not want to bear the weight of keeping such a secret as their sacrilegious relationship.”

Baekhyun’s eyebrows quirk up. “And so you revealed them?”

Junmyeon shakes his head. “I did not get the chance to. God found the three of us in contact with each other, two angels revealed to a human, and I was thus tied to the both of them.”

“So you were cast out?” Baekhyun did not exactly look sorry for him. Maybe he held sympathy for the two star-crossed lovers. It was of little importance to Junmyeon.

“No. Not immediately. But it certainly did not put me in God’s good graces.”

Baekhyun laughs as if there was a joke in there somewhere. 

“He found a reason a couple of days later, in that I had not sought to protect my neighbour; I failed in loving thy neighbour as thyself.”

“Wait, he wanted you to defend the guy?”

Junmyeon shrugged. “I’m not really sure. Apparently it was that I had not shown him, the angel that fell, great kindness before his sin either.”

“That’s a funny twisting of the story.”

Junmyeon shakes his head. “Maybe funny for you.”

“Oh yes, how silly of me to forget,” and this time Baekhyun is grinning devilishly.

“How about you then?” Junmyeon asks, wanting to shrug off some of the attention Baekhyun is directing at him. “How did you fall?”

The devilish look extends to Baekhyun’s eyes. “It’s not a pretty story, Saint.”

“You’re a monster?” He doesn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but it does anyway.

Baekhyun reaches across to pat him on the cheek, eyes glinting red just for a moment. “It’s hell, darling. We’re all monsters.”

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Junmyeon picks up one of the rocks and throws it as hard as he can at one of the cave walls. It does nothing to quell the anger that boils beneath his skin. Junmyeon’s sense must have gone wrong. They’d met another dead end. 

“I was a good angel.” The words are tugged from him painfully like a plant being torn from the ground. “It is those who falter and those who misstep that fall from grace, but I listened and I played my part and now I’m here. In _hell. ”_

He doesn’t hear anything for a couple of moments. There’s only the distant crackle of fire that Junmyeon can always hear.

“Weren’t we all?” Sehun’s voice is soft, so quiet that Junmyeon almost doesn’t hear it. “Good angels, I mean. Weren’t all fallen angels good once?”

Baekhyun’s last words to him from the other night are dredged to the forefront of his mind again, the demon’s hand curling around his shoulder—Junmyeon had found himself surprised they weren’t claws. _“You should ask Sehun about it, about how he fell.”_

_“Why?” he’d asked in return._

_“Maybe demons aren’t the only monsters out there.”_ And with that, he’d disappeared into the crowd.

Junmyeon shakes the thought off. He doesn’t have time for Baekhyun’s cryptic riddles. “It doesn’t matter who they were before or what they might have appeared as. They’re here now. They can’t have been very good angels if they’ve fallen to hell.”

Sehun shifts from one foot to the other. His lips are pursed together, pensive and careful in a way that Junmyeon never seen a demon be. “Satan wasn’t always evil. Just because he’s here now, doesn’t mean that he’s never been good before. Otherwise he would have never been Lucifer in the first place.”

“Satan fell because he was greedy.”

“No,” Sehun says, straightening his shoulders a little. “Lucifer fell because he realised he didn’t have to listen to God anymore; he realised he didn’t want to.”

_How had demons deceived themselves into believing such a story?_ Junmyeon didn’t voice the thought aloud. “He fell to hell. What is that supposed to teach you?” he says instead.

Sehun doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, his eyes are fixed on the entrance of the cave. Junmyeon sees light dancing in his eyes and for the first time, finds the fire of hell a pretty sight. There’s a strange beauty in it, when it’s reflected in Sehun’s eyes. But then the boy’s eyes shift back to him and the hint of a smile toys with his lips. 

“He fell so that he could be freed.”

The words rattle something inside of Junmyeon. It’s a thought he’d never considered, that he’d never _wanted_ to consider. “Were you freed? When you fell, did you feel free?”

Sehun doesn’t answer for the longest time.

They make their way back to the village in silence, their footsteps rhythmic against the dusty planes of hell. It’s only when they’ve made their way back to Sehun’s place—standing on the doorstep—that Sehun tells him, “Flying. That’s what I felt when I fell. I felt like I was flying for the first time in all my existence.”

And then he steps inside, leaving Junmyeon standing on the doorstep, shellshocked.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

The air between them is different after that. Junmyeon can’t quite pinpoint how, but he feels it between them; an uninvited guest taking up room inside of–

_Inside of what?_

Sehun had called them friends the other night, throwing the word out casually like a ship pushed into the ocean without a sail. Is that why Junmyeon is so uncomfortable about this new awkwardness between them? 

No, he can’t be. He needs Sehun, in a simplistic, normal way. He needs a guide around the underworld and someone who knows the lay of the land. Them being friends just makes it all a little easier.

And when Junmyeon is out of here, back up amongst the clouds, it will all be just a distant memory—a flame he can snuff out when he’s ready to forget.

There’s nothing, not even the faint tendrils of worry that flicker through him at the thought of leaving, that can keep him from heaven. It’s where he belongs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're halfway there, folk! I hope you're enjoying these boys as much as I enjoyed writing them~


	2. The Return of Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sehun’s grin is wry. “Don’t you see? That is hell. That is what we are. Mistakes have birthed a thousand and one demons and yet we still jump so hastily at the opportunity to call all of them bad.”

> _Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently we have had our difficulties and there are many things_
> 
> _I want to ask you._  
>  _Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you._  
>  _Quit milling around the yard and come inside._
> 
> — Richard Siken.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Flames flicker over rocky walls, their light tracing patterns onto its surface. It had been another featherless day. Junmyeon sighs, letting his head hang low as Sehun leads them back to the cabin.

Sehun’s voice is hesitant, careful, in it’s reassurance: “It’ll be okay.”

A sigh falls from Junmyeon’s lips.

“You’ve got time,” Sehun tries again, “they’re not going to disappear–”

Junmyeon freezes. Inside his chest, the ropes tied to his soul draw tight.

For a moment he can’t breathe.

And then it kicks in and his heart beat picks up double time, and the world around him quickens to the same rapid pace. He’s moving, a little too hastily because he almost stumbles over himself as he goes. He doesn't even notice that he can’t quite see what’s in front of him anymore or that the air around him has grown cold. Not until a hand curls around his wrist.

He can barely make out Sehun’s face in the dark.

“We have to get out of here.”

Disbelief rises in Junmyeon’s throat. “What?” 

“You don’t understand.” Sehun’s hand tightens around his wrist. “We can’t be here.”

Junmyeon has to resist the urge to tug his arm from the demon’s grasp. “My soul– a piece of my soul is in here; I can feel it. We _have_ to find it.”

“No, please. We have to leave. _Right now.”_

Junmyeon grits his teeth. “I’m not leaving until I find that feather.”

“Junmyeon, please. You’re not understanding me, if your soul is in there then–” He cuts himself off.

There’s something cracked in Sehun’s tone, something that has Junmyeon’s gaze darting to his face. It’s then that he notices, even in the darkness, the fear written all over him. 

“It’s not safe here, especially at night. We have to get out of here.” Something flickers behind Junmyeon—a movement, or worse, a shadow, Junmyeon can’t tell. But from the expression on Sehun’s face, he knows it’s bad. “We need to go.”

This time Junmyeon is powerless to disagree. Sehun tugs on his wrist, frantic, and before he knows it he’s fumbling his way out of the dark. For one horrifying second, Junmyeon is sure that the darkness is one long, never-ending stretch. But then his vision clears and they’re at the mouth of a tunnel that Junmyeon doesn’t even remember walking into. 

“Where was that?” Junmyeon finally decides to ask. 

Sehun glances across at him. It’s then that he seems to notice that he’s still holding onto Junmyeon’s wrist. He drops it hastily, looking sheepish, and throws a look over his shoulder, slipping his hand into his pocket to curl around something. He doesn’t pull it out, the only thing that Junmyeon catches is a faint, familiar glint of silver.

“That was Ashema Deva.”

“What?”

Sehun lets out a little sigh, looking a little shaky. “There’s some places in hell that are dangerous even for us.” He bits his lip, eyes still darting back behind them. “There’s a legend about a certain Asmodeus, one of the princes of the seven hells, and where we just went is said to be his resting place. It’s not…”

Sehun is quiet for a moment, finally withdrawing his hand from his pocket. His fingers curl into his palm.

“There are some secrets of hell that don’t need to be unravelled.”

Junmyeon remembers the terrified expression that had filled Sehun’s eyes. He nods once. When they step through the doorway of the cabin, Junmyeon watches the tension bleed out of Sehun’s shoulders and can’t help but feel guilty for having caused it in the first place.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Junmyeon is relieved when Sehun suggests they spend the next day walking around the market. Despite how adamant he’d been the day before, he’s unsettled at the idea of going out again and searching.

The end up on the outskirts of some tapestry stalls. The designs are filled with the shades of red that Junmyeon has become accustomed to in hell. There’s one, fluttering in a non-existent breeze, that has his breath catching in his throat. A woman. She looks serene, her hand open, palm up; beckoning. 

It’s what adorns her back that has his heart squeezing.

Wings sprout forth from her back—as large and as powerful as Junmyeon remembers his own to be. Except there not a shimmering white. They’re as black as a moonless sky. And she’s using them to fly.

_(Flying,_ Sehun had said. _Flying for the first time._

_Freedom.)_

He turns away.

Sehun is talking with one of the store vendors, gesturing at something and just as Junmyeon draws close, the man pulls out a little crate of what sound like glass bottles and offers them to Sehun. He receives a wide smile in return. “Thank you so much, Kibum.”

The man, Kibum he assumes, waves it off with a smile. Faintly, Junmyeon is reminded of Baekhyun in the quirk of the man’s mouth. “It’s no trouble, Sehunie,” he assures. “I always make sure to tell the guys to reserve some of their yield for you. It’s practically second-nature at this point.”

Sehun laughs, some of his shyness seeping through. Junmyeon has to hold back a fond smile as Sehun thanks Kibum one last time, tucking the crate under his arm.

“What’d you get?” Junmyeon asks him, when Sehun makes his way over.

“Lacus.” He shows the crate to him, bottles neatly stacked together. “My supply was running low.”

“Where do they get it from?”

Sehun adjusts the bottles as they walk, the glass tinkling as it makes contact. “They get it from earth, Kibum and his coven–”

“Wait, there’s demon covens?” _How had they never known about them in heaven?_

Sehun nods. “Yeah. They’re not too common around here since most don’t like being bonded to others so closely.”

“Why do people choose to form covens?”

“Most of the ones I’ve met just use coven bonding as an expression of their commitment to one another.” _Wait demons committed to one another?_ Junmyeon’s still reeling a little from that information alone, but Sehun doesn’t seem to notice.

“I guess there’s also the bonus of heightened power tacked on to it which is appealing as well. Kibum’s coven is pretty small—just the five of them—but they’ve been here since before I fell so the combined strength of them all is…” he trails off. “Let’s just say that it’s a lot.”

Junmyeon tries to wrap his head around what a demon coven would be like and fails miserably. “Are they dangerous?”

A smile toys with the corner of Sehun’s mouth. “They can be, if they wanted to be.”

Junmyeon’s eyes widen and Sehun laughs.

“It’s alright, they’re good people.”

Junmyeon remembers the affection which had infused Kibum’s tone as he spoke with Sehun. The thought makes a spike of jealousy makes its way through him—although he’s not sure why.

They walk for a little more, the soft clinks of glass against glass filling the silence. They’re just passing a display of silk when a memory tugs at Junmyeon’s mind. Something he’d been meaning to bring up for a while.

“You said something to me, a little while back,” he starts.

Sehun glances across at him. “I tend to say a lot of things to you, you might want to be a little more specific.”

“Oh shush, you brat.” Sehun laughs and Junmyeon can’t help shaking his head fondly. “No listen, this one is important. You said something to me about love. I’ve been wondering what you meant, when you said… you said that you didn’t think that anyone has ever loved me before.”

Sehun’s teasing smile is gone.

“I just wanted to know,” Junmyeon continues, a little cautiously, “what made you think that.”

Sehun lowers his gaze to the box in his arms. “I wasn’t intending to be harsh.”

Junmyeon shakes his head. “It’s okay, I didn’t– Maybe at the time I might have been a little offended hearing you say that, but now I just want to know _why_ you said it.”

Sehun stills looks a little guilty, his hands clenching and unclenching around the crate. If his hands were free, Junmyeon imagines them running over the edge of his shirt or fingers curled into his palms. “I only said it because of what you were talking about before that: about guarding one’s love and having to give yourself up in order to be loved.”

“You called that devotion,” Junmyeon remembers.

“Yeah. Yeah I did.”“But how does that have anything to do with someone loving me?”

Junmyeon watches the way Sehun’s chest rises and falls, and waits. 

“In heaven, there are a different set of rules,” he begins, hesitant as if he’s trying to find the right words. “Devoting yourself to and serving God; this is at the top, right?”

Junmyeon nods. “We follow God because He is all knowing. By following Him, we are serving humanity as a whole.”

“But it is still God’s word that you follow, no? At the end of the day, that’s what heaven is all about—for both humans and angels. Everyone is trying to hold onto God’s love.”

Junmyeon’s eyebrows furrow. “If you want to look at it like that, then I guess you could.”

“My point I’m trying to make is the way in which people gain God’s love,” Sehun bits his lip, still looking a little wary. “Like you said, people have to give themselves up completely for it. He demands that you give everything over to Him in order for you to receive the thing which He calls ‘His love’. It is the only love that you are told you should want.”

“God’s love is pure,” Junmyeon tries to reason.

“There, that too. In heaven there is pure love, a proper sort of love, and then there is…” Sehun pauses for a moment, looking as he is turning the words over in his mouth. “Then there is a ‘bad’ love. The one that you’re not supposed to feel. But where, really, is the line between the two? What makes ‘bad’ love, _bad?”_

Junmyeon scoffs. “That is like asking what makes demons bad.”

“Is that not a valid question too?”

_This is nonsense,_ Junmyeon thinks to himself but doesn’t say aloud. “No, we know why demons are bad.”

Sehun tilts his head to the side. “Do we? All we know is that they make mistakes. Why do those mistakes deem us bad forever? How do we become rotten to the point where we are banished to hell for all eternity?”

“It is what God has told us.” To Junmyeon the answer appears simple. 

“He has made you into a demon. Are you bad as well?”

His words startle Junmyeon and it takes him a moment to think of what to say. “I may have been– I may have made mistakes. But that does not mean that my soul is bad.”

Sehun’s grin is wry. “Don’t you see? That is hell. That is what we are. Mistakes have birthed a thousand and one demons and yet we still jump so hastily at the opportunity to call all of them bad.”

When he continues, his voice is gentle. “This is why I guess that nobody has ever truly loved you before. Not because you are undeserving of it and not because someone is not capable of loving you. But because of your devotion to your creator. You only seem to know the love of God, and I learned long ago that His love is as concrete and as tangible as the clouds He stands upon.”

Sehun’s fingers have tightened impossibly from where they grip the crate, his knuckles white. When he speaks again, there’s something off about his voice, perhaps something a little broken. 

“God is willing to turn on you at any moment, no matter how much he has claimed to love you.”

Junmyeon stands frozen in place for a couple of moments. Before he can stop it, a defiance that doesn’t quite feel like his own rises in him. “One learns early on”—he tries to keep his resolve steady—“that God’s punishments are done out of love. _‘Do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves.’”_ Even as he recites the words, they feel sour in his mouth, as if they have gone stale.

When he glances up, he sees Sehun eyes filled with a pained look—a sadness that doesn’t belong there. “That is not love,” he says gently. “If it was, would he have cast you so quickly into the depths of hell? If it was, would he have been so unforgiving?”

“I…” The words do not come to Junmyeon.

The next time Sehun speaks the words enter the air softly, seeping into the spaces around them, wrapping around them both. “Sometimes I suspect that God does not know love in its truest form. Call me a heretic until you’re blue in the face but I cannot help but wonder what He truly knows about love.”

“The way I’ve always seen it is that there is something a little crooked and something a lot mad within true love. It’s not perfect or pure and it never seems to want to follow one set of rules. There’s just something unexplainable about it that I can never seem to capture fully, and yet it exists without me having to.”

At some point, they’ve come to a stop near a fissure in the ground, molten lava flowing just below the surface. Sehun’s gaze finds it, watching it bubble over, and Junmyeon’s rests on the curve of Sehun’s cheekbones illuminated in the light.

“Sometimes,” Sehun whispers, “I find myself wondering if hell is one of the few places that we can let ourselves love and be loved. Perhaps among this abyss people can find a home. Because down here, they’re allowed to be broken and loved all at once.”

Even if he doesn’t mean to, the words coming from Sehun’s mouth sound closer to scripture than anything else Junmyeon has ever heard; as if they’d traced out a whole new tapestry that he hadn’t been able to see before.

“If hell is the reward you get for trying to be loved by God, then is it worth trying?”

Junmyeon doesn’t have an answer to that. 

(Or maybe he does. Maybe he _knows_ what his heart would answer. But the idea is too scary, too ruinous to everything he has ever known that he does not want to even contemplate it.)

They walk in silence. Sehun’s words repeat in his head like verses; _passages._

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Despite Sehun’s warnings, Junmyeon can’t stop thinking about Ashema Deva.

After a couple more days of searching and finding nothing, he spots the darkened tunnel on their way home. He watches Sehun stiffen at the sight of it, his shoulders going rigid. 

“It’s day time, right?” Junmyeon tries to say it casually, pushing down the tugging he feels in his chest, pulling him forwards. The guilt he felt the other day is being overtaken by something else—desperate and willing to burn for what it wants.

Sehun sucks in a breath that hitches in the middle and gets stuck in his throat. “Junmyeon. It’s not safe. Day or night.”

The answer had been what Junmyeon had been expecting but not the one he wanted. He continues despite Sehun’s dismissal: “What's in there that could hurt us anyway? I thought we were immortal?” He’s trying to be conversational, desperately trying to keep his voice level, but he can feel himself slipping.

Sehun shakes his head, eyes still fixed on the entrance of the tunnel. “No. No, there are things worse than death that we should fear.”

Even though he knows he shouldn’t, Junmyeon decides to push on. The desire to find more of himself is too strong. “Is there no way that we can go there?”

“There’s–” Sehun cuts himself off, shaking his head again with more force. “We shouldn’t–”

“You didn’t say that it wasn’t possible though.”

“Even if it was, it’s not–”

“A piece of my soul is in there, I know it and–”

“Junmyeon, please.”

At that, his mouth snaps closed. There’s something too raw and painful that slips into Sehun’s voice. 

But it isn’t just the plea which had stopped him. He realises that he’d been trying to move towards the cave and when he looks down he finds Sehun’s hand curled around the bottom of his shirt.

“Please,” Sehun asks again, softer than before but still with that thin layer of dread. 

Junmyeon wavers. Then he nods once. He’s a little lost for words.

The first couple of steps away from the tunnel take every bit of his self control, but as they move further and further away, he notices tensions melting away from Sehun’s shoulders. He ignores it. He’s already let emotion cloud his reasoning once today.

There has to be a way. Because if there isn’t and Junmyeon never gets to complete his soul and find his way back into the sky, then Junmyeon would– 

He wouldn’t–

Then there would be nothing left.

And he too would be nothing.

“Junmyeon, I’m sorry, I–”

“You said you would help me.”

Sehun’s eyes go wide. His expression looks pained. “I know and I promise that I will do everything in my power to help but–”

“But you won’t help me find the last pieces. Was that also part of your promise?”

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Dinner is tense. Trying to sleep is worse.

At some point, the roof blurs into darkness and from outside he can hear the distant howls of souls begging to be freed from their punishment. It’s a constant thrum that Junmyeon is suspended in.

A cry pierces through the air. Junmyeon shakes his head. 

_You were the ones who messed up,_ he muses to the night air. _You were ordered not to sin, and look what you did? If you had followed the rules that He laid out for you then you wouldn’t be here. Why did you question his authority or doubt the lengths he would go to punish you?_

For a moment the world outside quietens. Or maybe the ringing in Junmyeon’s ears is so loud that the noises are drowned out.

_I should have just obeyed. Everything would have been easier if I had just–_

He turns onto his side sharply, jaw clenched tight. He hadn’t meant to think that. The spirits. The lost humans. Those had been the ones he had been talking too.

A piece of him rises up in defiance but he grips it with both hands and shoves it back in the box it came from.

_No. This isn’t right._

Another emotion tries to crawl out of the box, this one a little too real for Junmyeon’s liking. He can’t bear to look at it so he squeezes it into the box, slamming the lid shut.

Junmyeon’s not sure that he trusts himself with his own thoughts right now. With one tug, he pulls the sheets aside and makes his way out of the bed.

The doorknob yields under his hand. That, he had been expecting. What he _doesn’t_ expect is the soft light that streams into his room or the low murmur of voices that reach his ears. 

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop but as he makes his way down the hallway a little he recognises Baekhyun’s voice and can’t stop himself.

“–it’s madness. You can’t possibly be considering it.”

_What is Baekhyun doing here so late?_

“There’s a way that this can work. We both know that it’s not impossible.” Sehun’s voice is low and careful, and Junmyeon barely catches it. He shifts closer until he reaches the doorway that leads out into the kitchen area.

Baekhyun, despite Sehun’s disagreements, is resolute. “It’s too dangerous.”

“But Baekhyun, I promised him that I would help. I’ve been there before, it’s okay. And I’ll bring protection with me, so we can be as safe as we possibly can.”

_Protection? A promise?_

They’re talking about Junmyeon.

Baekhyun scoffs and Junmyeon can picture him clear in his mind—darkened red eyes and as poised for a fight as ever. “I don’t care what artefact Chanyeol gave you. I don’t trust those things.”

Sehun lets out a sigh. “I trust them. And I trust Chanyeol. They work–”

“They don’t work against everything and you know it. It can’t protect you from everything dangerous that’s down there or what they could do to you.”

“But–”

“No,” Baekhyun cuts him off. “You can’t cave just because he asked you to.” Junmyeon tries not to startle at that because _when did he get that kind of power to say Sehun?_ ”You can’t give everything that you’ve worked hard for, the pieces of your soul that you fought so hard for, just for this.”

Sehun takes a moment to respond. Junmyeon wonders if he’s going to deny Baekhyun’s accusation about conceding to him but Sehun surprises him instead. “He’s doing the same thing I did. He wants his soul back as much as I did and I can’t just– I can’t just ignore that.”

“Why not?” Even though Baekhyun’s voice is hard.

“You know why.”

Baekhyun sighs. He doesn’t sound surprised. “It’s dangerous.”

“We’re demons. Hell is dangerous.”

“You– Sehun, I can’t let you do this.”

“Baekhyun,” Sehun says, sounding apologetic but resolute. “I’m not asking for permission.”

It’s quiet for a moment. 

Junmyeon moves slightly so he can see through the doorway and spots Sehun and Baekhyun standing in the middle of the room. Sehun looks small and worn out—as if he’d found a way to fold his body in on itself. Baekhyun doesn’t look much better. His mouth is set all funny like he’s swallowed something bitter.

“Please don’t go,” he tries one more time.

Sehun lets out a shaky breath. “I have to.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes for a moment, expression pained. “You’re not going to let me convince you out of this, are you?”

Somehow, Sehun finds a way to curl in on himself even more. “I’m sorry.”

Baekhyun shakes his head, drawing in a shaky breath of his own before reaching out to pull the other demon into a hug. “I had to try at the very least.”

Sehun, despite being a whole head taller than Baekhyun, leans down to tuck himself into the other’s shoulder. Junmyeon pulls himself away from the scene. It’s too much for him to watch.

He finds his way back to his room with a lump of emotion in his throat. He should be happy now that Sehun had agreed to take him to the cave. He feels none of it in the slightest.

The sheets are cold by the time he slips back into them. A spirit’s wail echoes from outside. He can’t help but agree.

Baekhyun is gone by morning. The tsunami of emotions he left in his wake does not disappear as easily.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

There’s none of their normal chatter as they walk. The weight of everything hovers over them—as uninvited as always. Maybe Junmyeon had invited it accidentally, considering how he seems to keep misstepping and causing rifts between them.

He can tell where they’re going even before the tunnel is in sight.

As soon as he sees Sehun’s shoulders grow tense Junmyeon wants to cringe away. For a second, he gets the urge to tell Sehun that he doesn’t have to do this. Perhaps they can figure something else out. But then the cords attached to his chest tug harshly and it all shatters.

When he sucks in a breath it rattles in his chest.

They stop at the mouth of the tunnel. Neither of them has spoken a word yet.

Sehun’s hand slips into his pocket to curl around what Junmyeon now knows is the artefact Chanyeol gave him. 

He takes a step forward and on instinct Junmyeon raises a hand to tug him back. But his hand never connects with the boy’s shirt and he lets it hover there for one heartbeat, then two, before dropping it back to his side.

_This is what you wanted. You asked for this._

Stepping into the tunnel feels like someone has just snuffed out a candle. It’s dread that blooms in place of light.

Junmyeon wishes that he could turn back time.

_If he could then he wouldn’t even be in hell,_ a part of him chides.

A distant screech reverberates against the tunnel walls, managing to be in the exact direction that Junmyeon’s soul pulls him in. It seems that there’s no more time for wishes.

They find two pieces of his soul.

The feathers had been a dainty white; asphodels slowly hidden by the darkness that rose up to engulf them. Touching them had almost been painful, and the joy they brought had faded as fast as it had appeared.

Junmyeon feels hollow. 

It doesn’t feel like a victory at all.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Neither of them say a word until they’ve made their way through the doorway. The first thing Sehun does is slump against the wall, breaths sounding shallow in his chest. “It’s over,” he murmurs, eyes slipping shut.

Junmyeon stands next to the door, feeling like his insides have been scooped out. “One step closer to God.” It’s his mouth that shapes the words but they don’t actually feel like his at all.

Sehun sighs, resembling a resigned, tired, paper thin version of himself. It only makes Junmyeon feel worse. There’s not even a bite in Sehun’s voice when he tells him that, “It’s God who scattered your soul around heaven in the first place.”

Junmyeon reaches up to drag a hand over his face. “I’ve told you already, that is the punishment that He gives to those who disobey. And His punishment is another way that He shows that He cares.” Junmyeon has said it before but the words sound different in his mouth when coupled with the undeniable ache that curls around his heart.

Another soft sigh. “If He cared so much then why would He put us in danger?”

Junmyeon is tired of his fight. Every time he has it, he finds himself believing in what he says less and less. “It is the price we have to pay for jeopardising his love.”

“But it’s just as you said right there, isn’t it?” Sehun tips his head back against the wall. “God’s love is conditional. Is there any tangibility to it? What is the point of dedicating our lives to wanting it?”

Flares of anger rush through Junmyeon but he has no idea who they’re directed at. Himself, probably. “It is _good_ that God only offers His love to those who deserve it. He is doing what is right.”

Sehun lifts his gaze up, something small in his expression. “Wasn’t he supposed to be all loving? Everyone makes mistakes.”

“There are some mistakes that are unforgivable.”

“Yes, yes… _unforgivable_.” And now Sehun’s expression twists into something else entirely, pain blooming on his face as if the word pierces through him.

Junmyeon suddenly can’t breathe. 

He’s _hurt_ Sehun, he knows it even if he doesn’t know how. ‘ _You should ask Sehun about how he fell,’_ Baekhyun had told him, and yet Junmyeon had missed the hint entirely (or rather ignored it). He wished that he hadn’t.

Because hurting Sehun feels like a sin—the first sin he’s committed that Junmyeon can’t hide away from. That makes him want to fall to his knees and beg, _desperately,_ for forgiveness. 

“Why does He get to decide when someone no longer deserves kindness?” He sounds so small. Junmyeon desperately wants to reach out for him but he’s already done enough. He doesn’t want to make it worse. “I guess God just doesn’t care,” Sehun mumbles to himself.

_And what a wall the statement creates between them._

“I don’t… that’s not–” Junmyeon can see his reasoning slipping away from him and frantically tries to grab it back. He can’t lose it. He can’t lose faith in God because he has nothing else to hold on to. “Just because _you’ve_ given up on him doesn’t mean that _I have to.”_

“He gave up on me first.”

“Maybe you d–” Junmyeon stops himself before the rest slips out. Ugly words. They were so ugly. And ready to be thrown at someone who never had never done anything to warrant them; someone who had only ever shown him kindness even when Junmyeon probably hadn’t deserved it.

Perhaps he just wants to give Sehun a reason to hate him. To hate him as much as Junmyeon hates himself in this moment.

Sehun’s eyes widen. Even if Junmyeon hadn’t finished, he seems able to guess what he’d been trying to say. Sehun’s lip trembles, a leaf in the wind.

Junmyeon can’t bear it.

He steps back towards the door, reaching for the handle, and then he’s turning away. He runs. He leaves with too many thoughts in his head and no idea which of them could make this right again.

Strange flowers grow in hell.

At some point, Junmyeon is joined on the bench. He doesn’t have to glance across to know that the demon is old and missing more than one part of her sound. Junmyeon can smell her from here: charred and blackened, a fire left burning too long. Junmyeon doesn’t have to look across to know but he tilts his head to the side anyway, meeting a blazingly red gaze.

“You’re young,” the other demon says as a statement rather than a question.

He nods. Her lips curl up in a smile that doesn’t quite hold any warmth.

“What are you doing out here late at night? You know the lost souls will be crawling around?” Her tone isn’t concerned, bordering instead on a taunt.

Junmyeon tries to keep his own voice steady when he replies, “I’m searching.”

Understanding dawns on her face. “Ah, how silly of me to forget how much you young ones were intent on finding their soul again.”

There’s a note in her voice, something more than derision. Junmyeon crosses his arms over his chest. “You act like it’s a bad thing.”

Something shifts in her smile. “It’s certainly a useless thing.”

“You think so?”

Her red eyes glint in the firelight. Junmyeon can’t help but think about how it’s nothing like the way light reflects from Sehun’s. “You’re not going to be able to go back.” She sits back a little and it’s even more clear now how much time she’s spent down here. “Fallen angels sadly stay fallen.”

Junmyeon stares at her for a moment, taking in her words before shaking his head. “Not me. I’m not staying.”

“What, you’re going to find your wings somehow?” The taunting tone is back, like a switch has been flipped. “You’re going to get Mr High and Mighty in the sky to give your wings back? Because the last demon—and only demon for that matter—that got God to offer them their wings back was Satan. Who refused, mind you. How well do you think that’s going to go down for you?”

Junmyeon has gone still. His breath catches. “My wings– what?”

“The last part of your soul that you need,” she tells him. “No angel is an angel without their wings. And since you’re not going to get them back any time soon, you’re stuck here.”

Junmyeon feels oddly like he’s underwater. Except for the fact that he’s in hell and he hasn’t seen the ocean in what feels like years.

“Didn’t you know?”

Junmyeon glances up at her. Her eyes turn to a darker flame that almost makes her expression look sad. He wonders if she can hear his world crashing down to his feet. He feels like he’s falling—wings ripped from his back—all over again.

“This is your home now,” she tells him gently, like it’s supposed to comfort him somehow. She doesn’t say anything as he jerks from his seat or even when he takes off down the street without a backward glance. Maybe she feels compassionate. Maybe not. She’s probably close to a thousand and one day, _one day,_ that’s going to be Junmyeon. 

_Oh God._

(No, not God. God is the reason this whole mess happened.)

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What?” Sehun looks groggy and still half asleep and Junmyeon almost feels guilty for waking him up. But then everything that the demon had told him comes back full force and the angry rises up his throat. 

“Why didn’t you tell me that this– this was all for nothing?!” He’s yelling but he doesn’t care. “That I’ll never get to be an angel again without my fucking wings!”

Realisation flickers across Sehun’s features and then it’s followed by a terrible sadness.

“You knew! This entire time, all the time that you were helping me, you knew that I would never be able to go back!”

“Junmy–”

Junmyeon shoves a hand out when Sehun tries to take a step forward. “I’m stuck here, _forever_ , and not once did you think to tell me. Did you enjoy watching me walk around like some idiot–”

“I’m so sorry,” and Junmyeon can feel the words vibrate against Sehun’s chest as he says them. He tears his hand away.

“Why would you let me think that any of this could work? Why would you ever let me believe that I could be an angel again?”

This time, when Sehun takes a step forward, Junmyeon doesn’t stop him. When Sehun reaches out an arm to wind around his shoulders carefully, Junmyeon doesn’t pull away. And when he lifts a gentle, careful hand to wipe away the tears that Junmyeon hadn’t realised had begun to fall, he finds himself leaning into it. 

“I’m sorry,” Sehun whispers. “I didn’t mean to hurt you by not telling you. I just– I only wanted you to be happy.”

“I’m going to spend an eternity in hell.” It’s muffled in Sehun’s shirt, spoken quietly. As he says the words, they sink into Junmyeon’s skin. Like admitting it makes it real.

Sehun just holds him closer.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Dreaming is not something he’s done before in hell.

But tonight when Junmyeon closes his eyes, a world behind them is brought into focus. The first thing that Junmyeon notices is the hand in front of him. The palm faces upwards, opening and waiting. Almost familiar.

He glances up and his breath catches. (Does he breathe in dreams? Junmyeon isn’t sure.)

It’s the lady from the tapestry, her long red hair billowing out behind her and her gaze fixed on him. There’s a loud, swooping swish and that’s when he sees them. 

_Her wings._

His heart aches.

But when she beckons again, he doesn’t shy away. “Come, little one,” she murmurs softly. He realises that he’s floating in the air and when he glances around, he’s met with a sky so blue that it almost hurts to look at it. It stretches as far as his eye can see. 

Oddly, he finds no comfort in it. There’s nothing for him to miss.

He takes her hand.

Together they sink through the sky.

The blue thaws into a more familiar purple and finally, red. Junmyeon lets out a breath he didn’t even know he had been holding. The lady sends him a knowing look with the hint of a smile on her lips.

It isn’t until they’re back in the throes of hell that Junmyeon realises something had changed about her wings. The dark black wings are fading and shimmering out of sight—becoming one with their backdrop. 

Words catch in his throat but before he can say anything, her feet touch the ground and the wings are done. He almost cries out as they disappear, terror spiking through him.

But her expression is still as peaceful and serene as before. As if she were still flying.

“Why aren’t you afraid that your wings are gone?”

When she turns to him, she’s smiling gently. “My wings are not gone, little one. Not truly.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

This time her smile is wry but not unkind. “I think you do. I think you just don’t want to admit it.”

What is there to understand? “Your wings are gone. You can’t fly anymore or– or be free.”

She reaches out for his other hand as well and holds both of them between her. “The answer is much simpler than that. Who says that you needed to fly to be free? Of course you may mourn the loss of them, for that was taken from you with more harshness than I think anyone deserves. But are they really gone? May we, instead, find freedom in another place?”

That makes him pause. Feathers as black as the night flicker in his mind.

“The answer is not as scary as you think it is,” she tells him gently.

Over her shoulder, the air ripples and wings peak through the layers of reality.

He thinks he might understand now.

She squeezes his hand.

_(Flying,_ Sehun had said. _Flying for the first time and finally feeling free.)_

When Junmyeon awakes, there’s no sunlight streaming through the curtains. One flash of that endless blue sky is all he gets before he finds himself glad that he’s no longer among it.

Next, he notices the body curled next to him. Sehun’s hand is warm in his. Somehow, Junmyeon doesn’t find himself missing the sunlight or the sky as much as he used to. Because there’s Sehun next to him, looking beautiful in the flickering flame light coming from the window. 

Junmyeon wonders if and when Sehun had become enough for him.

He watches as Sehun slowly rouses, burrowing his cheek into the pillow and unwilling to open his eyes just yet, and is horribly endeared. He gives Sehun’s hand a gentle squeeze.

At that, the demon’s eyes flutter open.

“Good morning.” Junmyeon smiles.

Sehun rewards him with a sleepy smile of his own. “Good morning.” His words come out a little muffled around the pillow. 

They lay there for a couple of moments. Then Junmyeon musters his courage: “I want to say sorry. For storming out and getting angry with you, and for even putting you in danger in the first place.”

Sehun’s eyes widen and they lose some of their sleepiness. “It’s okay,” he reassures. “It’s me who should be apologising. I should have told you about your wings before. I shouldn’t have kept that from you and I’m so sorry that I did.”

Junmyeon thinks back to his dream and the long-held battle of two forces inside him that is finally, _finally,_ starting to draw to a close. If he’s not already forgiven Sehun, he’s one the way there already. Junmyeon is careful in choosing his next words. “It’s–it changes a lot of things that I had been so certain about. But perhaps… I’m starting to think that maybe that’s okay. I think I might be– I think that I’ll be okay.”

That makes Sehun look a little breathless. “Yeah?”

_Freedom,_ he reminds himself. He smiles gently. “Yeah, I think I will be just fine.”

Somehow they find themselves back at the river. Junmyeon still isn’t quite sure if he can call it a river since there’s no water flowing through it. But they go anyway, letting their feet dangle over the edge of the bank. At some point he had gotten used to the sound of the lava bubbling past them and now the sound is almost comforting. He tries not to think too much about what that means for him.

From the corner of his eye, he spots Sehun picking at a loose string from his top. He fidgets for a couple more moments as his gaze darts around their surroundings. Junmyeon can tell that he’s working himself up to ask something so he simply waits. Leaning back on his palms, he gets to admire the way the light from the river warms Sehun’s cheeks.

Sehun swallows hard then the question leaves his lips. “Did your fall hurt?”

Junmyeon wasn’t quite sure what he had been expecting but it wasn’t that. It takes him a moment to draw his thoughts together before he says: “Yeah, it did. The parts of it that I can remember are all painful; my soul being shattered, my wings ripped from me, colliding with the ground. I’d never imagined such a pain as that, let alone feel it myself.” A silence falls over them, save for the crackling of lava. “How about yours? I know you said it felt like flying, but did it hurt at any point too?”

Something catches at the corner of Sehun’s lips, a sad sort of quirk in his mouth. “It… I already knew that I was going to fall. I’m not sure if that makes it any better, if I was already expecting the fall or not. I think it made a difference.”

“How?”

“How did it make a difference?”

Junmyeon shakes his head. “How did you already know that you were going to fall from heaven.”

A shadow passes over Sehun’s face. “I’ve never told you the reason I fell, have I?”

Another shake of his head, this one slower and more careful.

Sehun’s fingers return to the loose thread of his shirt. “Well, my human died. I was a guardian angel, you see, sent to look over someone and keep them safe– I suppose you already know all of this.” His tone is level, almost resigned, but the movement of his fingers gives all of his nervousness away. “The point is that they died.”

Junmyeon’s eyebrows furrow. “Humans die often.” It’s nothing more than the truth, however sad it may seem.

“Yes.” Sehun tugs hard on the thread. “But this one, I– God blamed me for their death.” Sehun bites his lip, so hard that Junmyeon worries that he might draw blood. When he speaks, his voice is as torn as the screams of the damned souls. “Suicide, you see, is a sin. So when they were sent to hell for taking their own life, taking away one of God’s _blessèd_ creations, I was sent with them. For not protecting them and for not stopping them.”

Junmyeon’s heart squeezes in sympathy. “You did not want to reveal yourself to the human?” It was something that guardian angels were cautioned heavily not to do, with a punishment almost as worse as hell given to them for such a mistake.

“No.”

Junmyeon tilts his head to the side. “Why did you not stop them?”

Sehun’s hands still with the loose thread clutched tightly between his fingertips. “Because it was what they wanted.” 

For a long time after that, neither of them says a word. 

At some point Junmyeon reaches out to tug the other forward, curling an arm around Sehun’s shoulders and settling a palm over the back of his neck. “It’s not your fault,” he murmurs into the boy’s hair. “You know that, right?”

“I–”

“Do you blame yourself?”

Sehun is quiet for a long moment. “Sometimes I do.”

Junmyeon holds him closer. “Don’t. You did what you felt was right. You let them make their choice for themselves. That doesn’t mean that it’s your fault.” He rubs his thumb over the back of Sehun’s neck gently. “They were hurting, in a way that nobody should ever have to hurt. Hell, they’re probably still hurting now.”

He thinks of the spirits, lost and screaming, and sorrow blooms in his chest. He thinks he finally sees what everyone—Sehun, Baekhyun, the lady in his dream—had been trying to tell him all along.

“My fall is why I found comfort in hell,” Sehun says, pulling slightly away from Junmyeon so he can meet his gaze. “More than anything, it made me realise that the rules of heaven had been stacked against us from the start. God thinks that He makes us all evil by throwing us down here and breaking our soul apart. But in reality, He freed me.”

Sehun continues, “That’s the beauty of hell. No one is expecting you to be anything but yourself.”

“This is where the bad go.” He doesn’t say it as a counterattack anymore. The words just fall from his lips, nothing more than an observation.

“Yes, yes it is,” Sehun agrees. “But it’s also where the broken always find themselves. And just because every part of someone isn’t perfectly good, doesn’t mean that every part is bad.”

“Freedom,” Junmyeon muses.

Sehun smiles. “Yeah.”

For a moment they’re both quiet. The lava beside them bubbles merrily.

Junmyeon’s gaze drifts over it. Then the cave walls. The firelight that flickers over them. Finally, he returns his gaze to rest on Sehun’s face. “I’m never getting my wings back.”

Sehun reaches a hand to place it over Junmyeon’s wrist. He squeezes tenderly. “You don’t need your wings to be a good person, Junmyeon. Even without them and without being an angel, you can still be good. You can still be _you.”_

Junmyeon tilts closer. “You think so?”

“I _know_ so.”

He leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together. Junmyeon reaches up to cup the back of Sehun’s neck and simply breathes it all in.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

“–and then Jongin decides that he wants to climb the Eiffel Tower. I swear,” Chanyeol shakes his head, “if Kyungsoo hadn’t been there, we would all be ruined.”

“Hey, that’s not fair!” Jongin slams his glass down on the table, clearly already a little tipsy. “We would have been fine.” Clearly no one believes him.

“I have to agree with Chanyeol on this one,” Minseok tells him, shifting his chair over a little so that there’s more room for Sehun and Junmyeon to sit around the table. “Climbing the Eiffel Tower draws a lot of attention to us and what’s the first rule of visiting the surface?”

Jongin pouts into his cup, looking properly chided. “Don’t be caught by God.”

Junmyeon takes that moment to get his bearings on their conversation. “Wait, you can visit Earth?”

“We can,” Jongdae nods. “You just can’t be seen. Otherwise God will think that you’re trying to corrupt humans.”

“It also requires a tier of stealth that I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to manage,” adds Baekhyun, levelling a glare at him. Junmyeon takes it. He deserves it anyway.

“What do you guys go up to the surface for?” He directs his question at Jongdae but it’s Yixing who answers.

“We miss Earth’s food,” he laughs. “Apples and peaches and strawberries, all the things that can’t grow in hell.”

“Not pumpkins though.” Everyone scrunches their noses at that. Kyungsoo grins at everyone’s reaction, adding on for Junmyeon, “Pumpkins are a truly hellish vegetable, they’ll grow anywhere, even in hell.”

“One gets tired of pumpkin soup after a hundred years of the same thing,” Yixing says with a conciliatory nod of his head.

Junmyeon has to stifle a laugh.

A timer goes off somewhere and Baekhyun gets to his feet. “That’ll be the lunch. Junmyeon, do you mind giving me a hand?”

The question is posed off-handedly but there’s no question in the hard set of Baekhyun’s mouth.

“There’s no need,” Kyungsoo says, already halfway out of his chair. “I can help you, Sehun and Junmyeon just arrived–”

“Nonsense,” Baekhyun cuts him off, the smile doing nothing to soften the tension in the corner of his mouth. “You cooked, Soo. I’m sure Junmyeon doesn’t mind.”

There’s a challenge in Baekhyun’s eyes. But it’s not like Junmyeon is going to deny him. Junmyeon gets to his feet dutifully and follows the demon into the kitchen.

He hovers for a moment as Baekhyun makes his way over to the stove. He's the one who called Junmyeon in here so the ball is in Baekhyun’s court at the moment.

After moving a pot away from the stove, Baekhyun sets both hands on the bench. He lets out a short sigh before he turns around.

“I haven’t forgiven you yet for putting him in danger like that.”

Junmyeon hadn’t expected him to. “I haven’t forgiven myself for it either.”

Baekhyun looks a little surprised at that. His eyes drift to the doorway and then he shakes his head. “He’s forgiven you, hasn’t he.” It’s not a question; not when they both know the answer already.

“Yeah,” Junmyeon answers anyway. He curls his hands together, holding onto himself tight. “Minseok was right.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “You’ll have to specify about which time for me, I like to block out the times that he’s right about things.”

A little of the tension bleeds out of Junmyeon’s shoulders. “That out of all of us, Sehun has the most angel left in him.”

Baekhyun smiles, the hardness set into his mouth finally thawing. “You love him?”

Maybe it’s too early to be asking a question such as that. It should be. But with an infinity in hell lying in their future, the restrictive boundaries of time start to loosen. “I’m allowing myself to,” he tells Baekhyun. “I want to love him properly.”

At that, Baekhyun’s smile turns soft. “Good. He deserves to be loved on purpose.”

When they bring out the food together, the room lets out a collective sigh to see them both sharing a grin. Junmyeon catches Sehun’s eye across the table. 

(Junmyeon’s pretty sure that making Sehun smile like that should be at the top of the Decalogue.)

He reaches out to hook his foot around Sehun’s ankle. The smile grows impossibly wider. 

And if Baekhyun tries to send him a knowing look, then Junmyeon resolutely ignores it.

On their way out, Baekhyun ladens them with a crate of fruit. 

“There’s watermelon in there because it’s Sehun’s favourite,” he tells them both. “Next time we can grab yours too, Junmyeon, if it’s not in there.”

“Thank you so much, Baekhyun,” Sehun tells him with a wide smile. “We’ll let you know.”

“No problem, Sehunie. You take care of yourself, alright?” 

Sehun nods obediently.

He points to Junmyeon. “You too, okay?”

“I’ll take care of him,” Junmyeon confirms.

Baekhyun snorts. “I meant take care of yourself, dummy. Just look out for both of you, okay?”

Junmyeon smiles. “Sure thing.”

And then Baekhyun is waving them out of the house, calling over his shoulder at someone—probably Chanyeol—about tea.

It’s definitely afternoon but that’s all that Junmyeon’s internal clock tells him. They start to head home but along the way a little clearing catches their eye. When they draw near, Sehun places the crate down next to some strange looking flowers before flopping down next to it.

“I haven’t had a picnic in a while. Certainly never one in hell,” Junmyeon says, chuckling at the way Sehun rolls onto his side to look up at him. 

“There’s a first time for everything.”

He takes Sehun’s outstretched hand and settles down beside him. As he pries open the lid of the crate, he finds himself saying, “I’ve had a lot of firsts here in hell.”

“Yeah?” Sehun accepts an apple, taking a bite.

Junmyeon smiles down at him. “Yeah. First demon party, first taste of Lacus. First time even holding a proper conversation with a demon.” He takes a bite of his apple just so that he can say he’s done that in hell too. He drags his gaze over Sehun’s face, the way that the light flickers over the slope of his nose and the curve of his mouth. “My first time meeting someone like you.”

Sehun’s hand freezes halfway towards his mouth. “What do you mean someone like me?”

A little pause lies between them, as if holding its breath. Junmyeon breaks it with a smile. “Someone special.”

The apple dangles from Sehun’s fingertips. He looks like he’s forgotten about it, eyes fixated on Junmyeon. “Special in what way?”

Junmyeon reaches down to brush a thumb over Sehun’s cheek and watches the demon’s eyes go wide. Instead of answering properly, Junmyeon tells him, “I’ve never kissed someone in hell before.”

Sehun’s eyes flick across his face and then understanding dawns in them. “Shall we make another first?”

He doesn’t know who leans in first—maybe it’s both of them—but they meet in the middle. At the soft press of Sehun’s lips against his, Junmyeon almost sends a prayer of thanks to heaven.

He tastes of apples and sunlight and underneath it all something that Junmyeon thinks is just inherently Sehun. 

Junmyeon curls a hand around Sehun’s cheek and presses close and doesn’t care who sees—people down here have seen far worse things than two boys who might just be in love. 

That night they hold each other close as their hearts beat in a slow, steady tandem. _This,_ Junmyeon thinks, _might just be as perfect as it gets._

_(“I love you.” The words feel right on Junmyeon’s tongue, even if he hadn’t quite meant to say them right then._

_Sehun smiles sleepily, reaching through the early morning haze for Junmyeon in return. “Will you believe me when I say that I love you too?”_

_“Truly?”_

_“Madly.”_

_Maybe heaven is right here, in this very moment; the two of them together.)_

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

Junmyeon finds that he doesn’t actually mind the lava abomination, Dragon’s Breath. The drink burns his throat a little on the way down but it sets a fire alight inside him—a feeling he doesn’t quite mind anymore.

With his drink in his hand and Sehun’s drink in the other, he decides to brave the crowd. He’s just weaving past an intertwined couple when a dainty and immediately recognisable hand grasps his shoulder.

“This place definitely needs something to spice it up,” Baekhyun laments to him. “It’s _way_ too quiet.”

Junmyeon huffs a little laugh. “I’m not surprised in the slightest that you don’t like silence.”

Baekhyun’s eyes flash a merry red. “There’s just something about silence that begs to be filled, you know?”

“And what do you propose would replace it, demon?”

Baekhyun leans close, as if sharing his secret, and his eyes flash a deeper, shameless red. “Chaos.”

And then he’s weaving his way back through the crowd with his goblet held high, intercepted by Chanyeol and pulled onto the dance floor. A smile flits its way onto Junmyeon’s face as he watches him go. _Chaos, you say?_

He finds Sehun in one of the quieter parts of the party, immediately curling into his side. Sehun’s fingers unfurl from his palm before reaching out to wind an arm around his shoulders. Junmyeon can’t help but marvel over how well they fit together. 

Maybe he’s okay with making a little chaos.

**───** ⋅ ⋅ **───**

They find the last piece of his soul illuminated next to a softly flickering flame. They crouch down next to it together and when Junmyeon cups it between his hands, a rush of joy floods his veins.

He knows that it’s the last one—in it some intrinsic way that he feels in his bones—and knows that he can stop searching. _After all,_ he thinks while glancing across at Sehun, _he’s already found everything he needs._

When he reaches out to press a kiss to Sehun’s mouth, the same joy spreads through him. 

A little gust of air flutters his shirt, gracing gentle touches over his bare back. Junmyeon tastes freedom on his tongue.

He takes Sehun’s hand in his and pushes up from the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a ride this has been! Thank you to all those who braved it with me.
> 
> There are many people who helped this story come to life but to name them would totally give me away. So just thank you. I hope you all know who you are and how much I adore you guys! 
> 
> To the wonderful Mod Were as well who ever so kindly gave me feedback when I was struggling and support when I needed it most.
> 
> Update!  
> This is my thank you to aliy — my bub! thank you for getting me into seho, ilysm — and noah, who sparked this whole idea when I was stuck™. And the fabulous, fabulous ophelia who I am forever indebted to and can not even begin to thank.

**Author's Note:**

> We're halfway there, folk! I hope you're enjoying these boys as much as I enjoyed writing them~


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